After using hours to estimate our projects for a long time and rarely coming within 20% of actual "work-to-ship," I have been told by a handful of people that "points" work a lot better at gauging the ...

I'm working as a QA for software product development. During the course of our meetings we typically discuss what tasks we are going to do and provide an estimate for each task. My manager has a habit ...

I consistently underestimate my work. I'm gaining a bad reputation for it. I want to get past it.
I think the main problem is that I don't fully outline every step that needs to be taken. The first ...

I am currently trying to create an estimate for a software proposal.
In this context, we are requesting a fixed cost amount of funds.
I personally lean toward Agile development practices. I, however,...

I've run into a constant issue. When a project starts, the client typically has a list of functionalities to be built in to the application. As a team we would like to follow Scrum. But the next thing ...

We use a scrum-based agile development process. But where should design get incorporated? Separate user stories? Tasks on stories?
We currently think of design as a separate task and break it out as ...

During estimation, the Product Owner presents a user story that seems clear to a team that usually knows their strengths and weaknesses, and that is not hostile. What should the Scrum Master do if the ...

In our Scrum team, when there is uncertainty about a story or the team is not sure about how to implement it, we take up a research story first. Based on the findings of this research story, we are ...

I'm new to a situation where a development team refuse to estimate anything until they have a fully defined spec. My angle to obtain estimates is to provide just enough of a spec so they can provide ...

I'm really confused on how agile projects are budgeted for cost and effort before the project starts. Cause the user stories are never completely discussed and estimated as a practice in agile. So if ...

I was wondering whether this approach I am doing to scheduling dev work on a day to day basis is correct. In which I assume that instead that a developer has 8 hours a day to do coding, they actually ...

In the seldom cases where your project (or milestone) completion estimation was too pessimistic, do you deliver results right away? If not, which tasks do you assign your team members in the meantime?
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We are trying to generate an initial estimate to see if a project is viable. The problem is that the project involves configuring and customising an open source product that the development team have ...

Previously we used duration for each story, but in our current sprint we are using story points (effort) keeping test team effort separate from the development team effort. Story points are based on ...

I am very often in an environment where the employees performing the work are constantly rolling over to new employees and these employees are allowed to estimate on their own how long tasks will take....

Should a client be billed for a certain amount of the learning curve? Should an employer pick up the tab on overhead? Should it be the developer themselves? Or perhaps a combination of all three?
I ...

Some consider the BOE the most important part of an estimate. How do you know that, when you write one, you hit the necessary aspects that brings confidence to the reader that the estimate is sound?
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As a one man band delivering smallish web development projects, I found that nearly all regression issues that clients find in the final development phase of the project could be found with unit tests ...

I'm a young programmer who has recently gotten a job at a company that is small but loves programming estimates. Since giving good estimates has been a problem for me in the past I'm happy about this ...

Background: I am a computer science student and am currently employed as a programmer for a health institution. Recently we discovered the need for a project which is beyond a 1-man job (I am their ...

I need a way to make fast estimates:
For example I'd like to know how long it takes to take a mobile device from nothing to production... let say that a customer wants a IPHONE like product(scope) ......

I have a question about communication channels that is talking about person-month but I don't understand what is a person-month. Does it mean this many persons? or this many months?
Here is the full ...

I just took over a project from a Project Engineer and just saw a revised project schedule. The revised schedule shows the project will be delayed by 3 months. I am trying to complete it within the ...

Here is an example of s story that recently made its way into a timebox.
As an Ecommerce Executive, I want to make improvements to the Request a Callback form which will make it easier to segment the ...

We're getting started with Scrum and have had a few debates about whether we should estimate in story points or ideal hours. The team is pretty divided, so I'd like to know if any real studies have ...

I used to work in an organisation that set a limit of 20 days effort, below which a task would be allocated to a technical lead who would be told to "just get on with it". Above this size, the work ...

Our team has been slowly trying to go towards agile, and like many other teams, up to this point, the question of "what do we do when we actually finish all commitments?" is fairly new and foreign to ...

Assuming that your team does a great job building its estimates and using a probabilistic approach versus a deterministic approach, and finds that the scope of work will take between 12 to 18 months ...

I have a fixed-sized team (with fixed-hours) and products, more than the team can handle. At any given time, while my resources are working on one product, requests keep flowing in about work on other ...